Illinois Republican Party

Quinn’s furlough plan filled with confusion
7/28/2010

State Journal-Register Editorial

Gov. Pat Quinn has made a real mess of his plan to make merit compensation employees at the state take 24 furlough days this year.

It’s become another example of the governor’s bumbling management and not being able to get his story straight.

Illinois has been waiting nearly 18 months for Quinn, who was a political outsider for most of his career, to start getting the hang of this job. To date, he has not. If he expects to be retained as governor in November, Quinn has to do better.

News of the furlough days first broke on July 16, days after the governor got caught giving double-digit raises to members of his staff (some of whom took new jobs or responsibilities), sparking a public outcry. While the governor’s office says the furlough days had nothing to do with the pay raises, it looks like a diversionary tactic.

The administration’s executive order assured affected employees that taking the furlough days would not impact their pensions.

That turned out not to be true, with a spokeswoman for the governor’s budget office admitting a week ago that “the administrative order does not supersede statute” and adding that “our attorneys and the pension systems are working together to address this.”

It would have been a good idea to figure that out before announcing a policy with such a major impact on people’s lives.

There is also uncertainty about a legislative remedy to that problem that allows state workers to purchase pension credits for up to 12 of the furlough days they must take. Quinn says there will be legislation to cover the other 12 days, but no bill has had a hearing, and the legislature is not scheduled to return to Springfield until November.

The administration acknowledged that vacation time plus the nearly five weeks of furlough days could affect productivity with a nonsense statement about each worker needing to be “a team player.”

You can’t be on the team if you’re not at work.

When an employee takes a furlough day, he or she is barred from doing any work. E-mail cannot be checked. Phone calls cannot be returned. The work of underlings grinds to a halt because their supervisors won’t be there to make decisions.

Mike Bull, an Illinois Department of Transportation supervisor, cut to the heart of the problems with this plan.

“I, as manager, can’t complete all the duties that my position needs to because my staff is a third of what it was 12 years ago. So by now forcing me to take over a month of work days off, I will not be able to complete as much work as I did last year.

“Service to the taxpayers will undoubtedly be affected.”

This move will save a paltry $18 million. This state faces a $13 billion deficit. Illinois needs a comprehensive budget solution. Quinn needs to focus on that instead of trying to divert attention from yet another unforced political error by dumping bad news on a Friday and hoping the story goes away.

SOURCE: SJ-R.com

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